The Daily Startup: Axial Raises Funding to Track Painkiller Use

The abuse of opiate-based painkillers has been at an alarming rate for several years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The startup Axial is looking to help solve the problem using big data analytics, and it has raised $8 million in Series A funding to advance this goal, Timothy Hay reports for Dow Jones VentureWire. Investors in the company include .406 Ventures, BlueCross BlueShield Venture Partners and Sandbox Industries. The company's service gathers data on large groups and tries to identify which employees or health-plan members are high-risk for opiate-based painkiller abuse.

ALSO IN TODAY’S VENTUREWIRE (subscription required):

SuperAwesome, a child-safe digital advertising startup, has secured $7 million to accelerate growth in North America and continue expanding in Southeast Asia. Twenty Ten Capital led the Series A round, with participation from Henry Chamberlain and Jamie Kirkwood of IBIS TMT and Sandbox & Co. as well as Hoxton Ventures.

Homejoy, a company that enables users to book professional home services, is shutting down, according to a blog post on the company’s website. Some of Homejoy’s employees have since been immediately hired byGoogle.

Dallas Venture Partners has invested in two companies in the area of information technology for the health-care industry: Phynd and Averify.

Ooma, an Internet telephony company, raised $85 million, based on the offering of 5 million shares, in an IPO after cutting its share price by 38%. The company had priced its IPO on July 7 at $18 per share but cut the price on Thursday night to $13. The company's stock dropped 15.8% by the close of trading Friday.

(VentureWire is a daily newsletter with comprehensive analysis of all the investments, deals and personnel moves involving startups and their venture backers. For a two-week trial, visit http://on.wsj.com/DJPEVCNews, scroll to the bottom and click “try for free.”)

ELSEWHERE AROUND THE WEB:

Frenzy Around Shopping Site Jet.com Harks Back to Dot-Com Boom. Online marketplace Jet.com Inc. has almost no revenue, years of likely losses in its future and a strategy that includes underpricing mighty Amazon.com Inc. on millions of items. Yet the company is in talks with investors about raising hundreds of millions of dollars in additional capital by year end, WSJ's Rolfe Winkler reports, citing people briefed on the discussions. The infusion could increase the online retailer’s value to $3 billion from $600 million.

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